Biting back.

'A' game my ass. Don't get me wrong but I couldn't capitalise on my physical resilience with some mental strength today. 100k swooping through the southeast with 170 fellow cycling nutjobs should have been a doddle but my pride got in the way. I had everything sorted but half way through the event he showed up....You know the guy, right? Am I moving too fast? Ok, breathe... lets start at the start.
I can be vindictive. Cross me and I'll not forget. Might be something cutting you said in passing or a look you gave me you know you really shouldn't have. Cross my wife or kids and you're dust. I've really tried to work on it, letting it go etc. In fact there's people talking to me today that would not a few years ago. Over in the old Saint Mary's Abbey in New Ross there's a Leper's squint in the wall of the North transept. The leper's colony in the town (Norman soldiers had brought the disease back from the Holy Land during the last Crusades) would go to the tiny hole in the wall to receive communion, being forbidden to mix with the general population. At one point half a dozen years ago I felt like that leper, the focus of a condescending attitude from a coterie of cyclists I had once known well. And in today's event a particular scenario came flooding back as I ran into one of those self-same dudes. I don't know how much you understand about cycling but it's about conserving energy as long as possible. A few years ago I found myself only a few kilometres from home in a small group dropped by the leaders. The gap was only a hundred metres and on a false flat, three out of four of us were trying to bridge, each giving it everything. And this one guy told us he was cooked. Couldn't contribute. I rode on like a demon possessed, alarm bells ringing because the same dude was putting in savage training every week. We got to within fifty feet of the group but they were starting to pull away again. I did one last savage turn and expected honesty from the others when, out of nowhere,the non-contributing 'cooked' lad shot out from my slipstream and sprinted across the gap to the disappearing leaders. I blew spectacularly and limped home. And stored that away in my hard drive.
Today, 65km into the ride, on a serpentine, flooded back road, whom did I find myself in the company of? Mr 'I'm cooked' from yesteryear. I pushed myself hard and followed him in the gutters for the next few sections of the course. Indeed I pushed myself too hard in order to position myself well for the final few climbs. I made sure to hold back a little and certainly not contribute to his pace. My heart rate peaked at 188 on the climb after he was dropped. I needed to copper-fasten his demise but my efforts were signalling my own. My legs locked like Brinks in the final few minutes but by then I believed I'd delivered some karma for past misdemenours. Yet I'm sitting here feeling petty. Shouldn't I be all Zen and forgive and forget? Shouldn't I be the better person? Maybe. But sometimes you gotta right the ship when its been listing a long time.
I feel ashamed in one way to have finished today's ride in such a manner. Hadn't I had a ball catching up with the friends that always respected me? Hadn't I felt like a fleet God in the bunch all day? Wasn't it a Belgian-toothpaste-handlebar-licking-morale-lifting beauty of a ride before my pride? Yes it was. Maybe I'll pop over to the Abbey tomorrow instead of cycling and ask for forgiveness and tolerance.

See you Sunday. Bring your A game.

A minute turns into an hour, turns into a day, turns into a week... a month and then it's a year. Where was I at a year ago? Peering at a dystopian computer screen full of silver and white shades having a well-broken elbow pointed out to me in post-mortem, post x-ray detail. A Morgan Freeman voice; "This son, is it. You've had it." But I knew I hadn't. I knew I'd do something. I wasn't going to be a God, like Mathew Hayman, winning Paris-Roubaix after 6 weeks on a home-trainer. But I would come back. I would not die as a sportsperson and take up golf. All due respect to my fifty year old peers playing golf but I can't respect that. Argyle only sits well on Travellers and 19th-hole-graduates and last time I looked I wasn't either of those. I refuse to talk handicaps and Gant.... I can always run, or walk, or hike, or... you get it. Not golf.☠ Did I mention I don't like golf?!
So this week I find myself in the privileged position of once more looking forward to the first event of the year in good, healthy form. Fingers and all sorts of bits crossed like a squid doing Pilates. A year ago the veil had come down and I'd already sunk into an overwhelming darkness. Affectionately known as the abyss. A broken elbow just as I was starting to hum in training. I was so happy just before I fell. So, so content. Rotten luck. I'm back now. My goals may have shifted to a long-view, racing, sun-holiday with the bike etc. but I'm here.
And I'm counting my blessings in every sense. I didn't fracture something important such as my skull or someone else's life. I'm thankful the Egyptian lady in charge of A+E took a shine to me and fast-tracked me out of what is carnage on a daily basis. I'm blessed my wife didn't put her foot down when really she had the right to. I'm glad I've regained full function and also got over that sea-fog of anaesthetic. If I'd hit the fentanyl I'd be dead by now. Instead I had no pain and I'm super grateful to the Flandrian in my DNA for that. I'm glad I was awakened to the caring few as opposed to the disingenuous multitude. Those I trust could now be counted on one (slightly inbred) hand.
And do I have a beautiful message, like Jesus with a bunch of misfits at his feet, somewhere in Galilee? Why yes, yes I do. Seize it. Seize it all before squinting eyes or early-onset-Alzheimer's or heartbreak or realization or circumstances beyond our control rob us of the right or ability to do it all anymore. Conquer before the tide turns against us. And if that doesn't sound like Jesus, then... seize life and don't hurt a soul in the process. Get what you can from life before it knocks on your door looking for something in return. For it will not be pretty.

Where were you at 7am???

I like feeling alive. I like that ain't nobody up at 6am on a Sunday. I like my two coffees as I catch up on a bike mag. I like locking the front door behind me at 7am and slipping off into what is still the night. I like heading down onto the main street and going the wrong direction, avoiding the broken glass outside the closed and blacked-out pubs. I don't like the discarded chicken-boxes and detritus from the Kebabish strewn at the mouths of lanes and doorways like terrible, random art installations.
I liked the rain this morning. I liked feeling dry apart from a stray dribble of road-water sifting down my chin occasionally. I liked the fantails of water arching up and away from my lights. I liked feeling that someone was trying to get up out of bed to emulate me at that moment but heard the rain and thought wiser of it.
I liked passing a lime-kiln and imagining Noah standing into it's hearth cursing the rivers of God's tears wending manically downhill. I imagined nodding and winking and heading onwards. I liked the sounds of drains and channels choking up with the deluge. I did not like the long puddles before first light for fear I'd forgotten a pot-hole or road-cut that could ambush me. I really liked the pre-dawn gloom forcing itself out through a dismal, foreboding sky that boomed "NOT today!"
I liked meeting not a soul for what felt like an eternity but was really an hour. Then the workers in cars getting back on the treadmill of life spoiled the moment now and then like sharing a cave with fireflies. I liked the silence near Thomastown, the empty fields and run-off that put paid to farm work. I liked seeing the same mare and foal, their backs covered with blue canvas, standing in a gateway, looking bewildered as I passed twice.
I disliked heading south, tired after the hard work, an hour of surviving ahead. But I liked the idea of the kids being up now, wife too, the happiness of disturbia. I liked the Ferry Hill knowing I was back to town, now that the chipper food and glass would be swept up and the café on the corner would be filling.
I liked returning as though I'd gotten away with something. I liked the look of those few people up and about wondering who did I think I was?
I liked unlocking the front door and stepping inside with a story to tell.

Merry Christmas.

What are the odds? It's been a great week. It began with a spin of epic proportions with the local cycling collective and wound up today with a lot of love on the side of the street in my home town. Funny because its been a year of Atlantic depths and Alpine highs, now rounded off nicely.
I'm a positive person. I try to see the good in everyone first. I try to put a smile on everyone's face because I've always known that the profundity of some people's despair can be impregnable and bottomless. Sometimes a handshake or random act of kindness or a quick quip at your expense can be all that is required to turn over a day.
So last Sunday my Christmas season began in the company of most of the local collective, the Kunst krew, the boys that are the art of cycling. They also happen to be a bunch of men that have propped me up on occasion this year and given a damn. Of course we went cycling! Cycling is my coke, my crack, my toke of choice and I'm never far from my next hit. We cycled on red-ale coloured roads, made sloppy by recent agricultural off-run, stopped by the sea for a couple of beers while seated around a smoking fire and went our separate ways with broad grins on our faces.
Then midweek I ran into John, my tattoo-artist of choice who had just been talking about me in a good way with a past pupil. Later I ran into a fellow teacher who'd only been talking about how I always try to remain positive. And I'd never thought about it. Family health problems, a broken elbow, unwanted stress from unwanted directions were the order of the last year. The stress of your ultimate fears sure can make you focus. I won three local races and a league in the last twelve months on anger, hunger and specific training despite all that. I showed up at the first league race knowing I was going to win. How did I know? Because whatever higher power that's had my back for half a century knew I deserved it. I had so much energy from all my life's dark matter, well, I could have illuminated hell with it. And often had. Putting anger and frustration into every pedal stroke is what won me that race. I'd figured the algorithm that converted a crap year and a world of worry, fear and lost sleep, into forward-moving energy. Hate energy. Dark Matter. I knew I was going to win on the grid. An hour's relief from the servitude of fear, worry and hurt, but a relief all the same.
Consider the inanimate buffoon that sat on the couch after breaking his elbow. It was, by a street, a turn around. Hats off to Richard for cajoling me. Ironic as it sounds, getting back training proved that pain is a wonderful anaesthetic. That and sharing my worries with a fabulous band of friends. Always a kind word just when it was needed.
And then on the street today. I ran into people. You know how Christmas is... people around that you haven't seen in a year. And I found that even though I've existed under a cartoon cloud all year, people wanted to talk. Or hail a greeting. Or share my crooked smile for a minute. You could call it Christmas cheer but really it was something in me that had changed.
Hemingway wrote that "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." I felt that today in South street. If only for a moment my sprained spirit and strained heart were stronger after a wicked year. So I'm not talking about a broken elbow, but you knew that, didn't you? I dunno how I smiled sometimes, dunno how I taught classes, dunno in fact how I functioned on so many levels.... a Dad, a husband, a friend, a son, a colleague. And sometimes I didn't. That's when I hugged my incredibly strong wife and went cycling. Into a block headwind. Ignoring soaked feet. Laughing at gravity on a hillside. That's where I healed; at the point of physical hurt. Now, I do understand that a cup of tea can do the same job for some of you.... I admire that. I'm jealous of that. But I'm Joe Rossiter and it's always been the longest way round to find the shortest way home for me. I've cycled for thirty years but this is the first time I understand why.
Hemingway also said that "Every day above the earth is a good day." And I see that now too. So I've been reading a good novel, drinking Yellow-Belly Citra Pale Ale, thinking about twinkling tree-lights outside churches.... I know that I'm a good person, that basically all of us are. Occasionally our DNA or our psyche or a trauma turn us away from the light. Maybe we all have a terror or two fizzing through our veins between the red and white blood cells?
Do we ever know? We can't know what keeps people awake at night, with nothing but a ceiling bearing down for company. But we can lift that burden one millimetre at a time by realising not all of us are what we appear to be. Maybe we should assume that life is tough for every single one of us and then no-one gets left behind or left out?

Billy matchbox tension

"Ah come on!"
"I'm sorry, its 5pm."
I lifted my watch and held it up to the camera, the digital face showing 4.57pm.
The security guard just bunched his shoulders and stared at me from far inside the closed office building. His voice came over the speaker.
"Five o'clock on my watch bud. Come back tomorrow."
"I can't! This says urgent! Its meant to be delivered no matter what! Can't you ring their office and ask if they're still there?"
"Nope. Not today."
My radio crackled. "Billy? 21 Billy? Delivered that last one yet?"
"21 to base," I replied, "security goon won't let me in. Can you ring the addressee? Monkey Wrench Motorsports. Fourth floor."
"Will do. Stand by."
I knew it would take a few minutes so I broke out my works box from the satchel on my back. The old timber box with skins and Amber Leaf and an old rolley machine. It had been everywhere with me. And now New York's East Side. I thought about the toothless old man of indeterminable age who sold it to me. I wish I was back in Thailand now, not inhaling cheap smoke on the side of an anonymous street in cold November. I knew it could be worse.
A minute later I exhaled into the face of an apologetic security guard.

Urban myth 9. Sitting at the bank

The bank in Baggot street became our central meeting point. If it rained we stood under the overhang of it's edifice. If it was dry we sat on the low wall out front. If it was dry and sunny it was the Costa del Dublin 2. By 2002 when I did my last Summer it had all changed. Or at least society had. The economy was thriving. Messengers were not. The pay was alright I guess, but the companies were charging customers an arm and a leg because the money was there. Couriers wages never rose exponentially but the size of courier company owner's houses and cars did.
The city was changing too... not quite Gotham but no longer Pleasantville. Traffic doubled as did messengers getting doored. Broken collar bones and shoulders seemed like an epidemic. If cycling the city had been a steady game of Space Invaders it was now on level 100 and there were way to many invaders to avoid. Drivers changed from fairly predictable hamsters on the city fly-wheel to coffee/ blood-pressure/ mortgaged stress balls willing to take you on in fisticuffs on the middle of the road. Cocaine was sniffed off cisterns all over the city to the point of normality, the whiff of joints as you passed cars in rush-hour slowness was common-place. Then the same people popped you with a door or wing mirror because they couldn't see you.
Jobs came in waves instead of a steady drip. You would sign-out by midday because you had done one job and go home only to hear of an epic afternoon. Or you'd lazily radio in from a warm bed in Rathmines only to be buried with 5 drops before you'd poured milk on your muesli. Receptionists became waitresses in Hollywood, i.e. they were only receptionists until something in HR or a bigger administration came along. So they stopped flirting/ making eye contact /caring /smiling /being receptionists. They'd question you if a delivery was late but not give a damn if you had to sit waiting on one of them to fumble a job into an envelope.
A lower class of motorbike couriers brought the standard down. One guy lost an envelope from his satchel on the way to the airport and swore he'd delivered it, including forging a signature, only for the envelope to be found on the verge and delivered. Instant dismissal. A pair of guys I used to work with had their own base robbed on wages day and couldn't be implicated as they'd not physically done it themselves and were miles away.
It was time to get out. I was mentally tired and not giving my all. The rain and cold were wiping the smile off my face. I didn't finish on bad terms...I just couldn't process everything anymore. But it was beautiful and horrible in equal measure. On one level I'll never have a better time. What an unbelievable way to spend my youthful energy! But I gave a lot. A hell of a lot. I miss the idea of being a bike messenger but not the reality. I needed a time scale with a finite number of months or years. I feel the love affair died out and took my soul with it for a while. So I shut the book and put it in my bag for safe keeping for fifteen years. Thanks for helping me open it! Sign here please.

Old age

Saturday was the last straw. Or maybe it was Sunday. I dunno, I get easily confused these days. No, actually it was fifth year English last week. Some of those pupils are as feral as a bearded-lady from a circus but most of them are smart. At least most of the time I don't smell burning when I ask them to think.... You see, at the moment we are charging through WB Yeats, and as sometimes happens' we arrived at 'The Wild Swans at Coole'. Not a bad poem but it can be tough for a teenage pupil to relate to an auld fella harping on about getting slower and feeling ancient. What has getting old got to do with the visceral energy of youth?
I guess those type of poems are written by saddened men remembering that energy and feeling, pretty sick that it ain't there any longer.
Imagine cycling up to Graignamanagh to chase up a girlfriend after cycling 200km that day already and then cycling home in the moonlight later? ENERGY!!!!!
Imagine working 12-hour days driving machinery or hanging out of a scaffold on a building site loading blocks before dawn in January and not being tired. ENERGY!
Imagine nothing phasing you as you leave your country and don't know how it's gonna work out or how long you'll be gone for! ENERGY!
Shakespeare wrote about time running out, Robert Frost wrote about his Autumn too. Yeats had a lot to regret. His unrequited love is famous. The most famous crash and burn of the literary set. He stares at the swans and wishes he was paired-off too instead of being the odd-one-out.
And worse still he ended up marrying what was really his third choice rather than being alone as he went grey.
On Saturday I found myself buying ECCO shoes: comfy, orthopedic, ECCO shoes.... As a young lad I saw older teachers in ECCOs and thought to myself "That'll never be me! I'll never look like a grand-aunt shuffling around behind a zimmer-frame!" How wrong was I?!! I have stress fractures in my feet,[probably from trying to catch and pass a thirteen-year-old a few years ago at a Saint Stephen's day turkey burner race]... but the fact remains that I am now one of those old guys. I'm not Yeats or Will Shakespeare or Bob Frost but I'm feeling their pain.
Yesterday morning I fell off my bike on a piece of ice so small I've had more in a G+T. But my instant reaction was to get up, get going again and not to acknowledge the pain or embarrassment, not to admit to feeling it, not yet giving in to the obvious.